Resident Evil 4 Story Explained: Plot, Ending and the 2023 Remake

Resident Evil 4 came out in January 2005, made by Capcom, and was remade by Capcom in March 2023. It's set in autumn 2004, six years after Raccoon City, and follows Leon S. Kennedy, now a US government agent, on a mission to rescue the President's daughter from a cult in rural Spain. This page tells the original story in full, then covers Ada's side story Separate Ways and what the 2023 remake changes. It has full spoilers for both versions. (Resident Evil 4; Resident Evil 4 (2023))

Before the story begins#

Leon survived the Raccoon City outbreak in Resident Evil 2 as a rookie cop on his first day. The US government noticed, and he was trained as an agent. Umbrella had since been sanctioned and had collapsed. Leon had served alongside a soldier named Jack Krauser on a 2002 mission in South America, and Krauser was believed to have died since. (Resident Evil 2; Resident Evil 4; Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles)

In autumn 2004, Ashley Graham, the President's daughter, was kidnapped on her way home from college. She had been seen in a remote part of Spain, and Leon was sent alone to find her. (Resident Evil 4)

The village#

Two Spanish police officers drove Leon into the countryside. At the first house he showed a local man a photo of Ashley, and the man attacked him. Leon had to kill him. Then the police car was rammed off a bridge, and Leon found one of the officers burning on a stake in the village square. The villagers came at him with pitchforks and a chainsaw, until a church bell rang in the distance and they all walked away towards it. (Resident Evil 4)

Leon found a man tied up in a wardrobe, Luis Sera, before the village chief, Bitores Mendez, knocked them both out. They woke chained together. Luis said he'd been a cop in Madrid, which wasn't quite the truth, and told Leon that Ashley was being held at the church. The two got free and split up. From Luis's notes Leon learned the name of the cult behind the kidnapping, Los Iluminados, and what it had done to the villagers: it had infected them with a parasite, Las Plagas, that made them obey. (Resident Evil 4)

Mendez caught Leon again and started choking him, then let him go when he saw something in his eyes. Leon now carried "the same blood". While he was unconscious, the cult had implanted him. A woman in a red dress shot at Mendez through the window and got away with a grappling gun. (Resident Evil 4)

Leon found Ashley at the church. Before they could leave, the cult's leader, Osmund Saddler, appeared. He told them Ashley had been implanted too. The plan was to send her back to America carrying the parasite, so that once it matured she would do as Saddler said. They escaped through the village with Luis's help, but the rescue helicopter was shot down. Leon killed Mendez, who mutated into a towering monster, took his false eye to open a gate, and crossed a drawbridge with Ashley onto the grounds of a castle. (Resident Evil 4)

Salazar's castle#

The castle belonged to Ramon Salazar, the eighth castellan of his line, a small, childlike man devoted to Saddler and guarded by two silent bodyguards. Salazar wanted Ashley alive. Over the following hours he split Leon and Ashley up with traps, taunted Leon over the radio and set monsters on him. (Resident Evil 4)

In the hedge maze Leon met the woman in red again. It was Ada Wong, who he'd last seen apparently dying in Raccoon City. He worked out that she was working for Albert Wesker, and she escaped behind a smoke grenade. Luis found Leon next, holding pills that slowed the parasite and a sample he'd taken from the cult. Saddler came up behind him and drove a mutated limb through his chest. Before he died Luis admitted he was a researcher Saddler had hired, gave Leon the pills, and asked him to get the sample back. (Resident Evil 4)

Leon got Ashley back, lost her again, and found out from Salazar that she was being taken to Saddler's island. He killed Salazar's bodyguard in the sewers, then Salazar himself, who fused with his other bodyguard into a single monster. At the dock Ada was waiting with a boat. (Resident Evil 4)

The island#

The island was a military base staffed by Ganados soldiers. Leon found Ashley in a cell and a paper aeroplane signed with a lipstick kiss showed them a way out. Then Saddler took control of her parasite and she walked off with him. (Resident Evil 4)

Out in the ruins, a man with a knife attacked Leon. It was Krauser, alive. He admitted he had kidnapped Ashley, to win Saddler's trust and get close to the sample. The fight ended when Ada shot the knife out of his hand. Later Leon fought Krauser again among the ruins, now with a mutated arm, and beat him. Saddler thanked Leon for getting rid of an American he'd never trusted. (Resident Evil 4)

The parasite in Leon was nearly mature. When Ada found him, he started choking her, and only came back to himself when she cut him with her knife. He took another pill. Leon found Ashley strapped down in a container, Ada distracted Saddler, and Leon got Ashley to Luis's laboratory. There they took turns in a machine that killed the parasites with radiation. Saddler had caught Ada and tied her up at the top of the base. (Resident Evil 4)

The ending explained#

Leon freed Ada and Saddler transformed into a huge creature. Ada threw Leon a rocket launcher, just as she had thrown one to him in Raccoon City, and he blew Saddler apart. Then he picked up the sample. Ada pointed her gun at him and asked for it. He handed it over. She jumped to a waiting helicopter, set the base to explode, and tossed him the key to a jet-ski. Leon got Ashley out and they rode away as the island burned. When Ashley asked who the woman was, Leon said she was a part of him he couldn't let go. (Resident Evil 4)

Saddler was dead and the plot against the President was over. But a dominant sample of Las Plagas was now in Ada's hands, and through her, the shadowy people behind her. The ending sets up a world where Umbrella is gone and its place is being taken by smaller, harder-to-see buyers of bioweapons. (Resident Evil 4)

Separate Ways#

Separate Ways, added in the PlayStation 2 release in 2005, tells the same events from Ada's side. Wesker had sent her into the village for the sample, with Luis as their contact. She rang the church bell that saved Leon in the village square, shot at Mendez through the window, and kept clear of Leon while Luis tried to get the sample out. When Wesker ordered Krauser to kill Leon, Ada stepped in. She was the one who finally killed Krauser after Leon left him alive. (Resident Evil 4: Separate Ways)

Her report adds the twist. Ada was never really Wesker's agent. She was working for another organisation that wanted the sample for itself, and her orders were to hand Wesker a sample of the weaker, subordinate strain and keep the dominant one for them. She notes that Wesker isn't stupid and knows what they're planning. Wesker did end up with Plaga research, which shows up again in Resident Evil 5. (Resident Evil 4: Separate Ways; Resident Evil 5)

How the remake changes the story#

The 2023 remake follows the same route, from the village through the castle to the island, but rewrites many of the details. (Resident Evil 4 (2023))

• Leon is darker about Raccoon City from the start, and Krauser is recast as the man who trained him. (Resident Evil 4 (2023))
• Luis Serra is a former Umbrella researcher trying to make amends. He travels with Leon, helps him fight, and makes the suppressants that keep Leon and Ashley going. (Resident Evil 4 (2023))
• The dominant Plaga sample becomes the Amber, a piece of ancient amber holding the parasite that Luis had been studying. (Resident Evil 4 (2023))
• Krauser, not Saddler, kills Luis, stabbing him in the back as he and Leon come up from the mines below the castle. Krauser dies in his final fight with Leon in the main story. (Resident Evil 4 (2023))
• Ashley is braver and more central. She gets her own stretch of the castle where she rescues Leon, and the parasite briefly takes her over and turns her against him. (Resident Evil 4 (2023))
• At the end Ada takes the Amber and offers Leon a ride, and he refuses. On the helicopter she asks Wesker what he wants it for. He tells her he wants to speed up change, even if it costs billions of lives, and Ada pulls a gun on the pilot and changes course. Whether Wesker ever gets the Amber is left open. (Resident Evil 4 (2023))

The remake's Separate Ways (2023) also changes. Ada is infected by a creature in the castle, Pesanta, and fights the parasite throughout. Luis made a deal with her: the Amber in exchange for getting him out. It ends on the same scene as the main game, with Ada turning the helicopter away from Wesker. (Resident Evil 4 (2023): Separate Ways)

Where it fits#

Resident Evil 4 follows Resident Evil Code: Veronica in story order. Next comes Resident Evil: Revelations, set in 2005, then Resident Evil 5 in 2009, where Wesker is behind the Plaga outbreak in Africa. The full order is on the Resident Evil timeline. (Resident Evil 5)

Test yourself: think you remember it all? Try the Resident Evil 4 quiz, twelve questions on the story above. (Resident Evil 4)